All Or Nothing At All

I've long maintained that there's something wrong with the polling, and I think it has to be obvious there's a lot that's wrong with the reporting.

When Biden (eg) has gotten more done in 2 years than most presidents manage in 4, but his approval rating is still underwater, there's something wrong with the way we're doing things.

Here's a hint at the problem form Sage Journals:

Losing Sight of Piecemeal Progress: People Lump and Dismiss Improvement Efforts That Fall Short of Categorical Change—Despite Improving

Abstract

Fourteen experiments (N = 10,556 adult participants, including more than 20,000 observed choices across 25 issues) documented how people perceive and respond to relative progress out in the world, revealing a robust “negative-lumping” effect.

As problematic entities worked to better their ways, participants shifted to dismiss them if they fell short of categorical reform—despite distinctions in improvement.

This increased dismissal of relative gains as “all the same” was driven by the belief that falling short signals an eschewal of doing the bare minimum and lacking serious intent to change, making these gains seem less deserving of recognition.

Critically, participants then “checked out”: They underrewarded and underinvested in efforts toward “merely” incremental improvement.

Finally, in all experiments, participants lumped together absolute failures but not absolute successes, highlighting a unique blindness to gradations of badness. When attempts to eradicate a problem fail, people might dismiss smaller but critical steps that were and can still be made.

References